


all evil has its root (break it)

by trojanhorse



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Airbending & Airbenders, Child Abuse, Dark, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, F/M, Gen, Incest, M/M, Mental Illness, Non-Linear Narrative, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-16 22:08:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29831634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trojanhorse/pseuds/trojanhorse
Summary: "I am your humble servant, here to serve you and our nation.”Ozai dropped to his knees before Fire Lord Azulon, a mockery of filial piety. He made no attempt at sounding sincere, instead invoking the echoes of a history known only to father and son."Use me.”
Relationships: Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Azulon/Ozai (Avatar), Iroh & Ozai (Avatar), Ozai & Zuko (Avatar), Ozai/Ursa (Avatar)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 33





	all evil has its root (break it)

**Author's Note:**

> summary adapted from season two's seventh episode.
> 
> beyond the four archive warnings this story comes with a general warning for dark and disturbing content, including: azulon/ozai incest, imprisonment, imperialism from an imperialist’s pov, victim-blaming (partially self-directed), schizophrenia and/or schizophreniform disorder, nightmares/dissociation/other trauma-related mental health issues, insults based on intelligence and weight, physical/emotional/sexual child abuse, relationship abuse, invasions and violations of privacy.

Ozai wasn’t made for silence. That talent, like many, had come more naturally to Iroh, who always knew how to stay quiet in delicate moments and dance around secrets.

Father hollered often (grand threats he rarely meant, though his youngest was still naive enough not to know that). "If you cannot appreciate your freedom,” he’d ranted at them both when they’d been caught slipping out to watch the festival fire-dancers, "then you’ll give it up! I’ve got two rooms in the Capital City Prison, already marked with your names!”

But at his most dangerous, Father wielded silence as a weapon.

*

"Who decides to colonize the Earth Kingdom by burning it all?! If you won, wouldn’t you need the roads? The harvests? Your precious coal mines? Who sees the Si Wong Desert and decides what it needs is a layer of sharp crunchy glass _…_ ”

The Water Tribe boy visits the cell often; at forty-six, Ozai’s learned this child’s projection and breath control are superb. If only his words matched.

" _…_ efficient to just burn the cities, but even that’s pure evil!"

"You want pure evil?” Ozai’s voice rasps from disuse. "Look one generation up.”

In the corner, the little earthbender frowns. "Truth.”

*

Ozai would have been six, seven at the most when his tutors first taught him about the colonies. "It’s an equal exchange,” they’d told him. "We provide laws and guidance, protection and order. The form of each colony’s payment varies according to its natural blessings. Some colonies pay by sending us food or coal or other precious goods. Others pay with skill and services.”

"If it’s an equal exchange,” little Ozai mused, still uttering every idea that flitted into his head, "then why are the colonists always so angry about it?”

No, he really hadn’t known how to keep silent.

*

Palaces loved nothing more than talk.

Once, Ozai was small enough to disappear. Iroh was particularly ingenious at engineering escapes and he’d smuggle Ozai out from under his teachers’ noses. The palace seemed a whole world in itself then, with endless turrets and hallways and servants’ passages. Nobody had the right to stop them from tramping where they liked.

Creeping into the kitchen one time, they overheard a cook squalling. "Don’t make more daifuku! Prince Iroh’s large enough without your help.”

"At least his brother’s growing into a handsome lad,” commented another servant. "No wonder he’s the Fire Lord’s favorite.”

*

Ozai was nineteen, and the Fire Lord’s favored child. He had a regular firebending master (his seventh, because as soon as he bored of one the Fire Lord had already summoned another) but he’d gotten himself a Fire Sage too, solely to sharpen his lightning. He spoke out of turn and went unchallenged. No one dared challenge him, when he rivaled Iroh as the deadliest firebender alive. When the Fire Lord rewarded each outburst with careful consideration and a knowing smile.

According to palace talk, Ozai was wildly spoiled. But special treatment was only fair. Half of an equal exchange.

*

Ozai was in his twenties when talk turned to his marriage. Iroh conquered innumerable women and at last married one and he teased his little brother shamelessly for his failure to do the same. 

In time the Fire Lord chose Ozai’s bride. 

Ursa was adequate. Pretty. Clever enough to say the right thing and nothing beyond it. Her lineage ensured their children would be powerful benders even by royal standards. She sat silent beside him, clad in her funeral-white, and Ozai sailed without worries through their wedding.

Still, in the dark of the bridechamber, he couldn’t shake his father’s shadow.

*

The Capital City Prison is dark and cold. Not as frigid as the coolers of Boiling Rock, where a cautious Fire Lord might keep an especially threatening firebender or where cruel Fire Lords would throw particularly irritating enemies, regardless of their bending status. Nonetheless the chill settles in, seeping into bones. At night breath hangs in the air. There is no outright torture here (there are rooms closer to the palace for that) but the cold and pneumonia kill all but the most disciplined fire-breathers with time.

Ozai lets out one exhale, surely imagining the new warmth that embraces him.

*

"You’d demand the rank of general? A boy barely old enough to enlist?!”

"Iroh’s winning easy victories at our borders!"

"And that distance from the palace appeals to you?”

"I only want to prove myself,” Ozai said, a little desperately.

Mother had died. He should have known Father better than anyone, now. But his temper was famously volcanic; Ozai never saw the explosions coming.

"I’ll send you off to follow my father’s footsteps! Prove yourself by capturing the Avatar …”

That threat was empty as the rest. But Ozai watched the sea from his bedroom window, briefly wishing that it wasn’t.

*

The royal family kept an ornamental pleasure garden on the outskirts of the island, acres of white sand and intricate water features. As a child Ozai preferred the comparatively humble garden within the palace. In his rare quiet moments he’d sit and appreciate the solitude. It was perfect serenity but for the quacking of those damned turtleducks.

He was twelve, getting grass stains on his pristine funeral-white.

He was twelve when his father first watched him from across the water. There was strange light in his eyes, like when he eyed a new colony and toyed with declaring it his.

*

The Imperial Firebenders granted Ozai his own detail at sixteen, two years early.

The palace whispered. Clearly Ozai was being groomed for the throne. He’d be named Crown Prince any day now if only his performance continued to please his father.

The guards were to protect him from all threats, foreign and domestic. They watched him closely, tracking all his doings except in private audiences with the Fire Lord. 

Ozai hadn’t "disappeared” in years, having abandoned such juvenile escapades. If he wanted to vanish now, he wouldn’t be able to.

The palace, once a whole world, dwindled to a cage.

*

Ursa seemed determined to live in a perpetual state of hurt. Ozai’d done his duty; she was expecting. Still, she always expected more, frowning each time he shook off her hand. She insisted on "bonding” with him, exhausting them both; he wished she’d give it up. 

She sobbed when he chose not to hold his firstborn, a son. Soon after that, her hurt hardened to resentment.

When Lo suggested that the next child be named for their grandfather, Ozai snapped: "Haven’t I given him enough?”

And Ursa, blissfully loyal to her Fire Lord, shot him a look of pure poison.

*

Ozai wasn’t made for silence. He learned it.

Fire Lord Azulon was famous for his tirades, voice thundering, the flames of the throne room flaring bright. At the slightest provocation he hurled threats, all terrifying, most empty. Previously, Ozai associated his silence only with the deepest fury.

But Father was silent, those first times. He intimated his wishes with subtle cues (a lingering glint in the eyes, a brush of the hand). The signals came over months, so quietly a different boy would have played dumb. Ozai wasn’t yet that skillful of a liar.

Ozai was fourteen, the first time.

*

The Fire Lord preferred dark, quiet spaces. In the throne room, before stepping down from the dais he’d lower the flames until they were fully extinguished, as if that could hide them from Agni’s sight. In time though, he broke the silence. 

"My prince,” he whispered.

He never addressed any act, opining instead on respect, piety, the divine right to rule. At first glance, his rambling held only a tenuous connection to their encounters. Ozai endeavored to ignore it, though sometimes he dreamed of Father’s words, of caging hands and honor lost.

Father preferred Ozai’s mouth quiet, unless swearing loyalty.

*

Ozai forgot himself sometimes, with Father, but his mind slipped further on his Ember Island honeymoon.

"My prince?”

He flinched.

Ursa frowned. "You’ve been sitting on the shore for five hours.”

She frowned often those days, as he lost interest in both their bed and anything beyond it. His inner flame dimmed like the throne room’s, sucked mysteriously out of his chest. Ursa frowned harder when he insisted the guards leave them alone, hell with the Fire Lord’s orders. They were all spies, tracking his movements only to report them.

"To whom?” Ursa asked, a question he couldn’t answer aloud.

*

Ursa had uses beyond the obvious. She cared for the children, fawning, doling out easy embraces. A twisting dread in Ozai’s stomach stopped him from faking that affection. He kept a safe distance instead.

Ursa had another talent. On Ember Island, she’d made him a special tea. Her frown turned frighteningly knowing, as if she’d been reading his thoughts, yet he drank it after she swore it wasn’t poisoned. He drank again each week. It warmed and steadied him and made him less fearful. 

(But even now he holds he might’ve had it right, about the guards and their spying.)

*

It petered out sometime after Zuko’s birth and before Azula’s. There was no grand bust-up, simply the dwindling of virility with age. The final encounters humiliated them both.

Father’s threats were largely empty. Too late, Ozai realized the most seductive promises were empty too.

Ozai neared forty with nothing to show for it. Of course, he remained the charming, favored son, granted allowances no outsider could explain, but he had no military record. No title but "Prince,” owed to him just by the luck of birth.

Ozai drank his tea and kept his quiet, letting the fury steep in silence.

*

Lu Ten died. Ozai took a gamble.

He requested an audience with the Fire Lord, with his family present as proof of his rightful claim (and as protection). Then his fool of a firstborn spoke out of turn, and Father (not extending his goodwill to Ozai’s progeny) dismissed everyone else.

(The children whispered in the curtains. They’d grown fond of disappearing acts, however poorly-executed.)

Ozai made a guess.

"I am your humble servant, here to serve you and our nation.”

He dropped to his knees, a mockery of filial piety. He invoked the echoes of a long history.

"Use me.”

*

He guessed wrong and Father exploded in his face, the usual bluster and leaping flames. Ozai barely heard any of it, trembling with what he swore was fury.

"Is it true?" Ursa demanded, standing in his room.

He stopped short. "Is what true?”

"What Azula told me? That he ordered you to sacrifice your own firstborn?”

Ozai wouldn’t know but it seemed likely enough, another of his father’s toothless threats. Then he paused again, inspecting Ursa’s latest frown. 

"I intend to obey him.”

"Wait.”

"Why?”

She swallowed, and lifted her chin. "Let me make him a special cup of tea.”

*

Another dreadful gamble. A servant caught Ursa removing the teapot, leaving Ozai no choice but to exile her preemptively, before the inevitable investigation. She vanished into the night. He allowed himself the briefest envy.

Morning found him bleary-eyed, waiting for the Head Sage to announce his coronation or for his own guards to arrest him. If the Head Sage didn’t come, he’d take down half the Imperial Firebenders on his way to the gallows.

He waited in the palace garden, though he’d banished himself from it at age twelve.

If the Head Sage didn’t come, what was it all for?

*

"This will must be legitimate,” the Head Sage told him when he came. "A forger would’ve had to get past thirty elite guards or else use a secret passage, historically known to only the Fire Lady. Though the Fire Lord preferred scribes, they would’ve had to know his own handwriting intimately: his conservative stroke orders, his unfortunately unbalanced characters, heavier on their left. Finally, they would’ve needed the combination to a safe in his most private bedchamber holding his personal seal, a combination too complex to memorize without seeing it over and over again.”

Ozai thanked him for the explanation.

*

Ozai wore fresh, clean white. At the Head Sage’s direction he knelt and swore to himself it would be the last time. A hilariously empty promise, although he meant it back then.

"We lay you to rest,” the Head Sage declared. "As was your dying wish, you are now succeeded by your second son.”

The flames devoured Father’s body behind him and as the crown dropped into place Ozai reached subtly to them, exorcising every vicious feeling and breathing it into the heat.

He rose anew. The whole court knelt before him, swearing fealty.

All was as it should be.

*

"Fire Lord Ozai.”

At his height, he was a grand, glowing thing, a true child of Agni. The court granted him due respect, marveling and cowering appropriately, and his plans measurably advanced the Fire Nation towards victory and prosperity. He was in perfect control. He never doubted himself; thus none could doubt him. No one dared place a hand on his royal person without his explicit permission.

Iroh returned as a shadow, half his mind abandoned in the Spirit World or laid to rest below Ba Sing Se’s walls. According to palace talk, Ozai only seemed brighter for the comparison.

*

Questions reaching the Fire Lord had no good answers, so every hour Ozai made poor decisions to skirt worse ones. Work buried him. He scarcely saw his children. 

(A relief.)

Although he considered asking family for counsel, Iroh’d already gone from hollow to suspicious. Ozai gave the idea up; brotherly love never saved him before. 

In dark moments he was afraid to ask and find himself lacking. 

Absurd, naturally. Ozai had always been fated to wear the crown, better than Iroh or any Fire Lord before. He only proved it further every hour.

If not, what was it all _for?_

*

Even though Ursa’d left her recipe and Ozai drank every cup, shadows flickered. Flashes of red and pronged gold.

The Fire Sages warned of ghosts, wicked souls cursed by some angered great spirit. Ozai didn’t ask whether ghosts could speak or touch the living. He ignored this as a trick of his eyes.

One rare quiet day, he visited his children’s bending lessons. Azula beamed, shooting several neat fireballs. Zuko gaped, tripped and knocked himself backwards with his own flame.

Ozai ignored them both. His eyes had fixed on Fire Lord Azulon, watching a twelve-year-old Zuko from across the grounds.

*

Iroh let Zuko into the war council, swearing he’d keep the boy quiet. Ozai believed him. Poor gambles from them both.

Clearly not made for silence, Zuko spoke out for the 41st. Although his guts might’ve been admirable, his logic was hopelessly naive, obviously a child’s. 

Ozai valued the division too. As a commander, he likely knew its use better than his son; fresh recruits became hardened veterans. They were assets. He took little pleasure in trading them even for their country’s good.

But the world is nothing but exchanges, and there is nothing so sacred it cannot be paid.

*

The duel was unnecessary. But this particular general drowned in insecurity, normally a virtue driving him to desperate brilliance, here a liability. He demanded a duel with Zuko though his own death would be a waste. Worse was the chance he’d prevail, eliminating an heir and undoing decades of propaganda around royal invincibility.

Ozai chose the best of bad options. He’d fight himself. He’d subdued assassins before without killing them; he’d briefly let Zuko struggle before knocking him out. The battle would embarrass and frighten him, teaching the lesson, leaving no real injury but to his pride. A safe bet.

*

Ozai could’ve stopped it at any time. By seventeen, when he learned to control the lightning that had left his father when Mother did, Ozai would’ve won a fair fight easily. He could have engineered and won an Agni Kai against Father, then taking his chances against Iroh for the crown. First sentimentality stopped him but silence burned that away until only the fear was left.

He had seen it in nightmares: facing Father, only to catch that light in his eyes from across the arena and lose all control, deserted by his own fire.

So he didn’t stop it.

*

Agni Kai.

Ozai braced for feeble blows. Instead, Zuko fell to his knees, cracking Ozai’s chest.

"Please, Father …”

Ozai’s control threatened to slip. He salvaged it, stepping forward and exhorting Zuko to rise and fight, but Zuko only tilted his face up (big eyes, baby fat like looking back years into a mirror). Ozai seized the one difference, a ponytail in a top-knot’s place, and shook it, an unmistakable threat. Terrified, the boy went willingly with him, young, stupid, weak, useless, _pliant_ …

"Please,” Zuko begged, a barely audible whimper. "I’ll do anything you want."

Suddenly, Ozai had nothing but fire.

*

The healers assured Ozai the burn would scar as he clearly intended. 

"Why?” Iroh demanded, breathing raggedly.

"I had my reasons.”

What else could he say? That there was no reason? He simply lost control or perhaps never had it?

Between them Zuko lay silent, peaceful but for the smell of sedatives.

"I’m exiling him,” he added casually.

No protests; Iroh simply sighed. "This country forgets every crime it cannot see.”

True, but there were advantages here beyond the political. Distance (escape) from this haunted palace might do a boy this age good. 

A flash of gold sealed Ozai’s decision.

*

The Zuko incident soon faded from the palace’s collective memory. Ozai decided to reevaluate the banishment a decade out when the political risks had diminished. 

He had a daughter still, far easier to handle. Where Zuko had been merely adequate she excelled, worthy of not only a father’s attention but a Fire Lord’s. So he praised her liberally, for her genius and work ethic and precocious lightning, as he would any asset valuable to his country.

But even with Zuko’s scar out of his face, Ozai couldn’t forget. He could only meditate and conquer new colonies and harden his control.

*

The ghost waned. It had seemed absent for years when Zuko returned, unexpectedly laden with glory yet unrecognizably quiet. Ozai engaged with him as often as was required for a Fire Lord and a so-called Crown Prince but no more. While he toyed with burning the will locked in a secret safe, naming Azula his heir, he let it stand for now.

Although Father’s ghost had faded (into memory, or back into his imagination) Ozai remained watchful. Oddly the scar, long-healed but still discolored and sprawling, provided a measure of protection. No one would ever accuse Zuko of being handsome.

*

Knowing he’d regret it, Ozai left Iroh alive. That same weakness dragged him to the Capital City Prison. He expected an apology, almost eloquent enough to persuade. He expected threats or fire, rendering execution unavoidable. 

He got quiet.

Ozai was never meant for that.

"You,” he hissed, just to fill the room, ”and your flower-lovers are all doomed.”

Quiet.

"There’ll be a triple guard on the eclipse, so don’t bother.”

Nothing.

"I killed Father to stop the silent treatment,” he snapped.

Only an abrupt inhale, sucking all the heat from the air.

"Goodbye, Iroh.” 

The words sounded much too soft.

*

Either Phoenix King Ozai would conquer the world or the comet would leave him dead.

(He remains unsure how he got that bet wrong.)

The comet saw him in a blaze of glory. Each breath filled him with the need to move and devour, with control and effortless calm. Like a dragon reborn he could fly and spew fire and set a kingdom alight on the slightest whim.

The comet saw him brought low in blazing pain.

Although his shame blurs together, he recalls the Avatar’s eerie glow and the children’s mockery and the echo of prison doors slamming shut.

*

"One of the children asked me whether you were always like this.”

Some days tea fumes stink up Ozai’s cell.

"I told them no,” Iroh continues. "I remember a sweet boy, quick to laugh. Loud and impatient, yet honorable. Unfailingly honest.”

Ozai tries for silence and fails once again. "How touching.” 

"You were loved.”

"Thoroughly,” he drawls.

"And I was Crown Prince …" Iroh’s voice breaks. "But _you_ were always our mother’s child.”

There’s silence.

"Ozai, what _happened_ to you?”

"Go, before I decide to ignore these bars and hurl you out.”

Iroh goes, despite mistaking it for an empty threat.

*

When Ozai’s lucky, he doesn’t remember it (the latest “it”). Nevertheless in nightmares, the rock grabs his wrists and forces him to a kneel. Every night he is dissected alive and entered by a stranger’s essence, stealing control only to lose it immediately. Although the air around him warms soon enough, he always wakes freezing. It’s the same chill as when he first learned the flame had been sucked from his chest.

"I took his bending away,” the boy informed his friends. 

An honest assessment, but wrong. Nobody can take without giving something back, even by accident. Exchanges lie everywhere.

*

"I apologize for the Agni Kai.”

"What?!” 

"I apologize. I lost control.”

If Father dared apologize, Ozai would’ve electrocuted him. But his witless son didn’t kill him even in rage during the eclipse, so Ozai takes his chances.

" _…_ what about everything else?”

Ozai scowls. "What else? I did nothing more to you that you didn’t knowingly provoke.”

"Yeah, you did nothing,” Zuko breathes. "You never knew me. You never talked to me, you only talked to Azula when she did something impossible. Everything was conditional on perfection.”

"There are worse conditions.”

The wrong answer, yet somehow Zuko lets him live.

*

Palace talk calls Ozai’s mind broken by trauma. He forgives them, although they’re wrong and also thirty years late.

His hair tangles; his beard grows shaggy. He has no mirrors, but for the first time nobody calls him handsome or expects even a facade of composure. It’s a strange freedom.

He runs firebending exercises, although they say he has no bending. He reshapes the forms to fit his cage. He preserves the discipline of body and breath.

One of the guards reports intermittent blasts of heat gusting from under his door, only to lose her privileged post for imagining things.

*

When the first assassin comes, Ozai raises two hands to conjure lightning before he catches himself.

They wear a guard’s armor, but the throwing knife in their hands is decidedly nonregulation, poisoned blade shimmering in the moonlight. It flies, aimed perfectly at his throat, and then veers off-course, clattering onto the floor.

The assassin freezes for a moment before sliding into an all-too-familiar firebending pose. They inhale to summon a grand, inevitably lethal cone of fire …

They gasp, and clutch their chest, and suffocate. Ozai presses his fingerprints into their throat before calling the guards, just to sell the story.

*

"We caught another assassin.”

About time. Ozai’s had eight offers of Zuko’s head on a platter but only one credible attempt on his own life.

"A guard tried sneaking in a suspicious substance,” Zuko explains. "She called it ‘special tea’; we’re identifying the poison now.”

"… that really was tea.”

Zuko scoffs. "So you’re a tea snob too?"

"Hardly! It’s medicinal.”

"For what?”

"Why should you care?”

"… Azula’s sick. She walks in circles. _Talks_ in circles.”

Again, silence.

"White jade root,” Ozai mutters. "Only the root. Steeped with silver wisteria oil.”

Zuko’s eyes widen with new light, knowing but not unkind.

*

"Do you _…_ know about weird things happening in the palace?”

"If you're referring to that poisoned curry, I had no involvement. Now, since you’re new to interrogations, this is when you throw fire an inch from my ear …”

"No,” Zuko interrupts. "I meant the weird chill in the throne room.”

"Consult an architect.”

"It’s supernatural.”

"Then consult the Sages.”

"I did.” Zuko gulps. "They say there’s a malevolent presence.”

Ozai opens his arms wide. "Obviously, I haven’t escaped my cage.”

"Father.”

And he relents. "I would suspect a past Fire Lord. Children of Agni are fond of outstaying their welcome.”

*

"Hi, Aang here.”

The Avatar stands beyond the bars, scrawny, fidgeting. Ozai’s body clenches in remembered terror; he breathes carefully to calm it.

"You were right,” the Avatar says. "The ghost was Fire Lord Azulon, trapped in this world for offending Agni.”

"Offending Agni how?” 

The Avatar’s stare dissects him once more, freezing him.

"I’m sorry,” the boy whispers. "It doesn’t excuse your crimes, but _…_ I’m really sorry that happened to you.”

" _…_ Is he gone?”

"I banished him from existence.”

Gratitude melts Ozai, making him stupid. He blurts, "You aren’t the last airbender.”

"What!?”

He smiles. "You’ll figure it out.”

*

"Fire is the element of power,” Iroh told him back when he could still corral his little brother into unsolicited philosophy lessons. "But air is the element of freedom, which is just as important.”

A younger Ozai had listened, thought it over, and laughed riotously. But now, he thinks, what is freedom if not power for himself, over himself? What is it, if not true choice?

Now, sitting in his cage, he could call air to his hand. He could shape it like a flame-dagger and sharpen it like a charged fireball. He could drill through the metal in front of him and he could storm to the palace in a tornado’s rage, collapsing the lungs of anyone who’d dare oppose him. He could win an Agni Kai and retake the throne without even a spark.

Father would want him to. Father had whispered that to him so many times, that he was fated to be Fire Lord if only he tried harder and gave a little more of himself.

So that night, Ozai sharpens his dagger of air, focusing a miniscule whirlwind capable of slicing through metal …

Or stone.

He places his hand against the rock behind him and slowly, quietly whittles open a door, not bothering a soul. He steps outside into open air and gazes up at the palace, that grand gilded cage glowing high above him. 

Then he turns away, towards the vast possibility of the ocean, and flies.

**Author's Note:**

> unless the word-counter failed me, these vignettes were all 100 word drabbles except for the last one.


End file.
